Our review on retrogenes and other retrocopies is online

Esther Betrán and I wrote a review on the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary consequences of a marvelous byproduct of genome infestation by retroelements: gene retroposition. This is a quite long account, yet a surely incomplete one, of the astonishing discoveries made in the past 30+ years on how retrogenes and other retrocopies originate, change and affect genome evolution. And yet, so many questions remains unanswered in this field, or have been explored in depth only in a few model organisms. Luckily, this is a very active area in evolutionary genomics: at least six more papers on retrogenes were published since the beginning of this year. Our group is also working on retrogenes in conifers, a taxonomic group with a lot of retroelements but no work yet addressing their impact in terms of gene retroposition. I hope to post soon about this project as well!